Maintaining the status quo.

Treading water.

Keeping a holding pattern.

Snarky has long suspected that she suffers from a slight case of whatever that dude in "Memento" had... her early life consisted of two year stretches between changes in scenery, and with each change she dropped most of her points of reference -- her friends, her hobbies, her life.

Pick up a new string, turn 180 degrees, start wandering the labyrinth again.

Sure, the "reset button" draws her back into a slightly different place each time, but it feels like two steps forward, one step back. It's a stilted, wonky march to the beat of time's inevitability.

There are a handful of touchstones. Powerful moments that break through the thorny hedgerows. Most of them are triggered by scent.

Today she's wearing Jacob's Ladder. The high, bright amber is bringing back memories of her maternal grandfather. Memories of his passing which was sudden, unexpected, and tinged by family lore about karma. He's been dead longer than he's been alive in her life, and that death still ripples through everyone in her family like a silent aftershock.

For years, his death froze her in a substrate of fear. Fear of nothingness and of simply not being anymore. It has taken time, but she is finally starting to see that being still and impacting little is an insult to this brief moment of somethingness she's been granted.

The amber is comforting, familiar. But it needs to be broken. She needs to climb those thorny hedges and see the labyrinth for what it is.

She's making a move.

Swimming for shore.

Touching down.